Several years ago, there was a story about a man who was at home and another man entered, pointing an automatic pistol. The assailant pulled the trigger but the gun didn't fire. The shooter looked at the gun and realized the magazine had fallen out. End of story, right?No, the man told his intended victim to wait while he went back to his car for the bullets, and left. The victim scooted, too.

Give a man a fish and he can eat for one day; give a man a fishing pole and he will find an excuse to never work again.Nollidj is power.

I loved this article (though not word related) about the observations of German children who have been living in Chicago. I don't know if you can access it, so if not here's a quote from it:

quote:

Want more Chicago-is-bigger-and-better through the eyes of European children? "American policemen ride on beautiful horses like knights," my kids tell me. They are mesmerized by police officers on horseback in Lincoln Park. Berlin stopped using mounted police years ago because the horses were too expensive to maintain. I like it best when my kids challenge the prejudices of their parents. "Why are the power lines in the air?" ask my kids. Our European explanation is: The U.S. doesn't care enough about its infrastructure and therefore didn't bury all power lines below ground. "You have been wrong," said my kids days later: "The power lines in the air have a purpose. The beautiful squirrels use them as bridges over the roads to avoid being run over by a car."

Producers of evidence summaries, clinical guidelines, and decision support tools must take account of who will use them, for what purposes, and under what constraints

Publishers must demand that studies meet usability standards as well as methodological ones

Policy makers must resist the instrumental generation and use of “evidence” by vested interests

Independent funders must increasingly shape the production, synthesis, and dissemination of high quality clinical and public health evidence

The research agenda must become broader and more interdisciplinary, embracing the experience of illness, the psychology of evidence interpretation, the negotiation and sharing of evidence by clinicians and patients, and how to prevent harm from overdiagnosis

On my way to work on Sundays I listen to this: http://soundmedicine.org/ Today there was a discussion very much like what you posted, Tinman. It seems that Consumer Reports Magazine and a group of health professionals are establishing similar guidelines to what you posted.

This must have been discussed awhile back? Anyway, Tinman, these principles look quite accurate. The think about a lot of statistically significant results in medicine is just what Tinman posted about crises in medicine - too often millions are spent on studies that show "significant differences" and yet they are really only marginally helpful, if that, in actual practice.

I enjoyed this article , which is tangentially related to words/language. It's supposedly about the language of horses, though it really only touches upon that. Her use of words, though, is what interested me. And I learned a new word, sprezzatura, meaning "an easy nonchalance that conceals effort." I suppose ballet dancers have (?) sprezzatura.

Some medical diagnoses may be correct but lead to unnecessary or even harmful treatments, researchers say in a recent Pediatrics paper. Here are seven of 15 diagnoses the researchers cite as possible examples of overdiagnosis in children:

Hi Tinman; Away back in August you posted a link that celebrated the top 10 mathematical innovations, and you asked:

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What do you think?

... You got no further suggestions in answer to your question (beyond Proofreader's jocose offering!), but IMHO there are two other recent significant mathematical innovations - to wit, Chaos theory, and Catastrophe theory - where the former is surely big enough to belong in the top 10 (replacing either "zero" or "logarithms"). Fractals, arising out of Chaos theory is the missing link in being able to apply mathematical modeling to a vast range of physical "irregular things" that previously defied such modeling (mountains, waves, forests, flowers, trees, etc....).

The invention of "zero" I have always felt to be over-rated - necessary, to be sure, but inevitable, and therefore not worthy to be called a Top-10 "innovation" (the mathematical equivalent of calling the wheel an innovation).

"The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame

Whereabouts in the top ten list would you place them? Or would you prefer to expand the list to a top 12?

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necessary, to be sure, but inevitable, and therefore not worthy to be called a Top-10 "innovation"

I differ from you on that. In fact, I'd drop calculus down to fifth and move zero up to second, above negative numbers; the concept of zero is really necessary before negative numbers can be grasped fully.

Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

It's interesting that, as so often, there's a difference in US-UK usage of 'professor'. In the UK a professor is a senior academic, usually the head of a department. I understand that pretty well every tenured faculty member involved in teaching is styled 'professor' in the USA. Over here the more junior teaching staff are called 'lecturer' or 'senior lecturer'. There is, therefore, only a handful of professors at each university.

Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Arnie, a professor here is often considered the senior academic, too, because in the academic hierarchy they are the "full professors." The lower professors are the assistants and the associates. We have lecturers as well, though not senior lecturers. The lecturers aren't on a tenure track, however, though the fulls, associates and assistants are. I am sure that's all as clear as mud!

This article talks about the importance of interpreters during war and how one man decided to help them to come to America.

I particularly liked this comment, having visited Scotland recently: "Meanwhile, over in America, Mr. Zeller was putting his Scottish orneriness to good effect, enlisting members of Congress, prodding the bureaucracy and in general refusing to take no for an answer."

An article from the "Big Think" site featuring the ideas of my father's old buddy, Garret Harden: http://bigthink.com/errors-we-...-of-the-commons-mythSee Harden's book, Promethian Ethics and his treatise, "The Tragedy of The Commons."T.Rump and Clinton's Wall Street cronies should take note.